In the hills of East Alabama, Willem Maker
spent more than a decade honing his songwriting skills in virtual
secrecy, but in 2007, he finally released Stars Fell On, a
rock record of a debut which was recorded and mixed entirely at
his own Foxhole studio on Turkey Heaven Mountain. Originally
released by Makerworks, the disc was reissued by Big Legal Mess
(Fat Possum) in 2008, in anticipation of a new full-length for the
label entitled New Moon Hand.

The sessions for this
sophomore effort
pushed Maker far from the idyllic comforts of his secluded home
studio, with adventurous collaborations taking place in Nashville
and Memphis, Tennessee. Along with four solo tracks from the
infamous Foxhole, two were done with Mark Nevers at the Beech
House, featuring members of Lambchop and Silver Jews, and six at
Electraphonic Recording with co-producer Scott Bomar and a band
that included Cedric Burnside, Jim Dickinson and Alvin Youngblood
Hart. New Moon Hand was released in 2009, resulting in
Maker’s first extensive US tour and a kind New York Times
nod in their yearly best-of lists.

For his third
long-player, Agapao, released in 2011 as a lovely
Makerworks limited edition
CD, Willem played and recorded everything himself at the Foxhole,
but this is no simple, solo, lo-fi folksinger effort. Besides
being at times a heavily layered and orchestrated affair, the
record rocks in its own weird way when in the mood to do so, and
with mixing by Mark Nevers, mastering by Sarah Register and
artwork by Christoph Mueller, the result is a beautiful,
collectible disc of over an hour’s worth of music, completing
Maker’s debut trilogy with what could be considered his most
accomplished, optimistic and uplifting work to date!

THE EARTH IS ALL THAT LASTS

Four long years after Agapao, which the
New York Times considered one of the best one-man band records
ever, Makerworks is finally proud to announce The Earth Is All
That Lasts. Thematically speaking, TEIATL is intended as a
dark twin to the open-hearted Agapao – so dark, in fact, that
Maker contemplated more than once abandoning the project
altogether. It wasn’t until this “best country rock
singer-songwriter from East Alabama who you have never heard of”
felt that he had enough distance from the material to approach it
more as a producer and performer than as a confessional songwriter
that this release began to take shape.

TEIATL was originally entitled Ain’t
Dead Yet and envisioned as a stark acoustic EP in honor of
Skip James and his infamously haunting cross-note tuning.
Thus, Maker began the initial recordings with live acoustic guitar
and vocals and no click track, intending to flesh things out with
minimal, atmospheric overdubs and no percussion. Pleased
with the live takes but ever dissatisfied with the attempts at
overdubs, the second stop-and-start-again factor that slowed his
progress was how to present the material, if at all. Thanks
to the Malian djembe featured on Agapao, loads of full-on
overdubs, some monstrous Ludwigs borrowed from a friend and a
touch of digital studio wizardry to shore things up, something
completely unexpected happened.

While TEIATL continues where Agapao
left off as a one-man band affair, recorded by Maker entirely at
the Foxhole and once again featuring mixing by Mark Nevers,
mastering by Sarah
Register and artwork by Christoph Mueller, the
new release is a significant step forward sonically, and it’s a
much more concise listening experience – unlike the sprawling Agapao,
this album is designed to fit snugly on one slab of vinyl.
TEIATL was released digitally on May 15, 2015, but Maker is
still searching for another label to reissue it and Agapao
on vinyl, if only in deluxe limited editions. Once again,
thank you all for listening, hope all is well and please continue
to spread the word!

A singer-songwriter from
Ranburne, Ala., near
the Georgia state line, Willem Maker worked alone to make Agapao
(Makerworks), his third album, singing and playing all guitars,
as well as bass, piano, drums. He got a brilliant illustrator,
Christoph Mueller, to decorate its cover. He released it in
April as a limited edition of 1,000, and you can download it
from his site, Makerworks.com. Do it. He’s so ripe it’s
ridiculous. Instead of ups and downs, ballads and rockers, Agapao
is a weirdly intense party, 15 songs of sophisticated
southern-rock trance music, composed with open-tuned guitar and
boot heel, adjoining blues and country and heterophonic gospel
music. It seems as if he’s making up episodic songs on the spot,
tucking shouts and grunts into secret places, creating new riff
sections that aren’t necessarily repeated.New York Times

The best country rock singer-songwriter from
East Alabama who you have never heard of … What we’ve got now in
Willem Maker is a guy who’s ready and knows his own aesthetic up
and down. Roughly, he makes southern rock. It’s not virtuosic.
It’s more like the North Mississippi single chord style, but it
rolls and it’s got some pop instincts and depth. He shouts,
basically like a southern preacher, which is something we’ve
heard an awful lot of — from gospel singers to Colonel Bruce
Hampton to Tom Waits — but he’s very rhythmic with his voice.
He’s using it as percussion as much as anything else. I’m gonna
put Agapao on my shelf next to the great one man
recordings, where one person plays all the instruments. Next to
Stevie Wonder’s Music of My Mind. Next to Todd
Rundgren’s Something Anything. And also, I’m gonna put
it next to a couple of Rolling Stones albums, Sticky
Fingers and Goat’s Head Soup. I think this record
shares the same kind of emotional world as those records.New York Times : Popcast Song of the Week

For Willem Maker, life’s questions, hells,
art forms and ecstasies are all bound to the recording studio …
the southern songwriter has completed a trilogy of records with
his finest LP to date … the instrumentation can grow as husky as
Maker’s vocals. He has a lot to raise his voice above, and it’s
his own doing: Willem Maker recorded and played every instrument
on Agapao, a detail that not only enhances its
grandeur — sometimes massive and cacophonous, other times
serenely powerful — but explains the crossroads at which the
creator now finds himself … mystic blues and gospel … his most
intricate and ambitious studio record.Hash

Everybody, seriously: You have to go listen to
these songs. Willem Maker is an incredible and gifted songwriter
and musician. He recorded these songs alone, in his tiny home
studio on the top of Turkey Heaven Mountain, Alabama. They
remind me of Nick Drake, Roscoe Holcomb, Eddie Hinton,
“Moonlight Mile” Stones, Blind Willie Johnson and of nobody else
ever. This is Southern rock as God, the original Allman Brothers
and Sun Ra intended it to be.Hereit

Tempest-tossed slow rock and country blues,
played in shimmers and drones, grunts and hollers, by a young
but old-sounding southerner. Fans of “Beggars Banquet” and
Charley Patton, take note. New York Times

There are moons and ruins in Maker’s head and
he’s a man who sings as if he were trying to summon the
greatness out of all of us - giving us these devastatingly sweet
and hearty songs about wilting shadows and wilting love, heavy
hearts and the kind of solitude that actually keeps a man
company more times than he’d ever be won’t to admit before a
crowd of people.Daytrotter

Fat Possum has taken its fair share of
criticism for moving away from the music that helped establish
the label — the Blues — to release anything ranging from indie
guitar to electronic music in recent years. However, the label’s
founders regained some kudos with us in 2009, supporting the
heart-tugging and gut-wrenching second album from Willem Maker.
The label has returned to its roots and is once again bringing
to the attention of a wider listening public the music of an
artist so nearly lost to us.Blues
Matters

Singer-guitarist Maker forges a muddy sort of
electric-blues that carries in its bones the raw emotionalism of
a deep-thinking Deep South musician who suffered 10 years with
toxic metal poisoning (hear his breathtaking “Lead &
Mercury”). He’s plenty self-conscious and all the better for it,
singing lyrics of rare imagery with an inimitable voice that
suggests a small mass of acrid phlegm is lodged in the back of
his throat. This Alabaman, in his 30s, benefits from the
ferocious musical clarity of his free-spirited friends, among
them Mississippi hill country drummer Cedric Burnside and
strings specialist Alvin Youngblood Hart. Downbeat

Mr. Maker seems strangely familiar, and even
more strangely good. He sounds older and wiser than he is … sort
of like Tom Waits without the hobo shtick. He sings in an
imposing growl, biting off the ends of his rural rhymes, and his
songs are rough and beautiful, somewhere between blues,
country-rock and hymns.New York Times

OK, stop what you’re doing. Seriously, right
now. Stop. Sit down. It’s not often I get unequivocal here, but
I’m going to tell you that you owe it to yourself to listen to
Willem Maker. New Moon Hand is the oasis of
contemplation and harsh beauty that you need to banish the cares
of the day, fifty-minutes of rootsy blues craftsmanship that
will take you away from it all and make you glad for the
experience. I’m not kidding; this is an amazing album … It’s
rare to find a promo blurb that delivers its promise, but the
press release here suggests that you can hear the wild open
spaces of Maker’s youth in his music, and you can – the
unhurried pace, the subtleties of light and shade, the way he
delivers his lyrics in little rhythmic bursts, all combine to
paint a picture of the American South that is a far cry from the
tired ironies and stereotypes of the hipster-roots set … Go buy
this album; if you honestly don’t like it you can mail it to me
with the receipt and I’ll buy it back off of you, just so I have
the opportunity to gift it to someone with enough heart to
appreciate it.The Dreaded Press

The opening 30 seconds of this album’s first
track sets up a tone that it replicates for the next 50 minutes.
The ghostly, stomping beat and skeletal guitar are gradually
joined by Willem Maker’s gruff, Waylon Jennings-styled voice,
rumbling about life’s heavy load. It’s a dark, ominous, but not
depressing sound that amps up with growling electric guitars on
the second track as Maker’s lowdown groove thickens. There’s an
ornery and bluesy thread, somewhat similar to that of R.L.
Burnside and his fellow Deep Southern contemporaries, that cuts
like a jagged rusty blade. Credit Bo-Keys member Scott Bomar, a
veteran who has worked with the similarly styled Jack-O, for
production and mixing that keep the sound dangerous yet not as
primitive as it might be in less skilled hands. There’s also a
Tom Waits vibe that runs through the set, especially when Maker
strips down to stark piano on the broken “Saints Weep Wine.”
He’s accompanied by sympathetic musicians who include Alvin
Youngblood Hart, Cedric Burnside, and the legendary Jim
Dickinson, but the album’s notes do not delineate who plays on
which track, a frustrating omission. Maker stays in his buzzing
swamp mode throughout, rocking out like ZZ Top after a long
night on the stuttering, driving “Old Pirate’s Song,” followed
by the blustery “Lead and Mercury.” The latter is an angry
autobiographical song about his near fatal poisoning from the
titular toxic elements he inhaled as a young adult because of a
tainted environment. Not surprisingly, it’s as raw and infected
as it sounds, with what seems like Hart’s hurricane of a guitar
solo twisting with portentous electric piano as Maker spits out
irate lyrics such as “stole my youth” for six minutes of
intensity that will leave the listener shaking. The ethereal,
church like ballad “Rosalie” closes out the disc, tearing the
sound down to just organ and floating, near free-form guitar. It
maintains the menacing mood yet softens the blow as Maker strums
in a minor key, stumbling and staggering in the creepy
introspective shadows he creates.Allmusic

Maker’s voice growls and roars in a primitive
style … not a million miles away from some of Dylan’s recent
forays into songs rooted in the Mississippi mud … brimful of
southern gothic imagery … An acoustic guitar coda however gives
one the impression that Maker believes in some form of
redemption and hopefully, eventually, some form of peace.Americana
UK

When he hunkers down on guitar (as he does
nearly all through his new album), the garage-folk blues of
Alabaman Willem Maker is near narcotic. Maker hits the strings
hard on New Moon Hand taking his beautifully poetic
lyrics and roughhewn voice to gut-grabbing heights. Be it
singing about the lead and mercury poisoning that decommissioned
him for a decade or the mesmerizing slide work on “Black Beach
Boogie,” Maker proves a new force to be reckoned with.WRIU

Given his sinister backstory, there were few
career paths, other than that of the gruff, contemplative blues
singer, which were realistically available to Willem Maker.The Skinny

Willem Maker has the right voice for this
music, a laid back, smoky take on the blues. His slightly
labored drawl and short delivery drifts silkily over the
exemplary guitar work … Maker is another man worth watching on
the ever reliable Fat Possum label.Penny Black Music

A singer/songwriter whose Southern heritage
merges in his music with the rougher edges of more contemporary
rock sounds.Buzzine

Steeped in the sort of raw blues on which Fat
Possum built its name (particularly in Maker’s aching,
rough-hewn vocals), yet it also contains enigmatic songwriting
that nods to more primordial music forms while looking forward.
Maker clearly calls to mind Tom Waits, yet there’s a sincerity
and exposed-nerve honesty to these songs that moves them well
past mere imitation or even tribute.Muze

Forget about the Kings of Leon, this is the
true face of neo-Southern Rock. Recorded at home in Alabama,
Willem Maker’s debut album combines the loose, raw sound of
vintage Neil Young & Crazy Horse with a bluesy, distinctly
Southern sensibility. Thick, fuzzy guitar lines rampage across
open-ended tracks as Maker hollers and growls in a rich,
gravelly voice. When you can make out the lyrics above the
swampy mise-en-scène, they’re intriguing enough to make you want
to listen closely and decipher what you missed. AllMusic

Poetic garage-rock-and-blues … pastoral
portraits of rebirth and renewal in the isolation of rural life
with a style that suggests influences from Charlie Patton to
Crazy Horse … songs about transformation and living a life
outside the lines … certainly encourages comparisons to the
garage-rock of the White Stripes or the Black Keys, [but] the
lyrics dispense with the familiar riffing on the blues
form. Willem Maker presents garage-rock with a
self-referential modernist poet as lyricist. No Depression

Of late Fat Possum has gotten into the
reissue business. Not reissuing lost nuggets from the 50’s or
even pre-war blues mind you, but instead lost classics from the
past year or so. First there was the reissue of AA Bondy’s
terrific solo debut and now the reissue of Willem Maker’s self
released record Stars Fell On. “Red As A Rose” is a
trance blues number that should appeal to fans of Charlie Parr
and William Elliott Whitmore. It’s a bit busy in parts, but when
the fog clears and you get Willem’s possessed vocals and
incendiary guitar it’s pretty special.Songs:Illinois

Fat Possum has a genius for finding unknown
musicians on tractors, as with the late Asie Payton or, in
Willem Maker’s case, in an Alabama cabin where he has been
anonymously making music for years. And how refreshing it is in
this day of proud ignorance, which usually manifests itself in
remarks like “Well, I just write from the heart, you know,” to
read an interview by an artist that begins with a quotation from
poet Mary Oliver. Maker’s album Stars Fell On is
comprised of hard-rocking, bluesy tunes that could have only
come from a home recording [from Turkey Heaven Mountain, in
Alabama]. Nashville Scene